I’m listening to Brooke’s podcast “When You Decide to Leave” and I’m having a hard time because I decided to leave the guy that I was dating because I wanted commitment. I realized that I was in a relationship waiting for him to commit, but a year and a half later we still were just dating.

When I called to breakup, I was pretty emotional and sad. I said: “I want monogamy. You don’t. I want to move forward. You don’t. I can’t keep going in these circles and I need time and space please.”

I don’t know if it was a “good” goodbye the way Brooke was saying. Hearing this makes me want to reach out to him and give a “good” goodbye, but I had asked for no communication so that makes me nervous to open communication back up because we still love each other so much… And I don’t want to get back into the same the dysfunctional circle we’ve gone in for quite some time. Plus, he could also reach out if he felt it was really needed for closure.

Although I do feel that I stayed in the relationship and worked a lot on myself and was a patient as I could be hoping that he would choose monogamy or commitment, I was not perfect and did have a manual. I placed emotional blame on him at times. However, I was working on all of it to try to be as centered as I could when it was time for me to leave. I wanted to rush and leave 6 months in. Here we are 1.5 years later and I have now left.

I am kind of anxious listening to this podcast. Maybe I did something wrong and I can’t take it back. Then, I ask myself why do I feel this way and this is what comes up:

Maybe I messed it up
Maybe he thinks I would never want him back
Maybe I was too much for him
I am too emotional, why can’t I just be chill
I am trying to find one more way for it to not end or for him to change and choose me

I know those are all painful thoughts that hurt me so I see no use for them.

Any thoughts?